Curiosity has long been a topic of scientific interest, but it encompasses so many potential traits and behaviors that it has been difficult to precisely target the cognitive and neural mechanisms that drive it. Recent work has reinvigorated the scientific approach to this topic by shifting from trait-level questions to a neurobiological perspective that emphasizes behavior, exploration and information-seeking. By viewing information as a reward, this research has leveraged the extensive body of work on reward processing to understand curiosity as a type of intrinsically motivated, goal-directed behavior. However, this information-as-reward framework raises a host of new questions about how curiosity develops and how it drives learning. In this dissertation, I aimed to test this framework and to address a series of questions about how curiosity drives exploration, learning, and memory. Chapter 1 addresses the question of how curiosity changes across the adult lifespan and tests whether these changes mirror well-established declines in dopamine transmission and reward sensitivity. The first study in this chapter found that, rather than showing declines in curiosity, older adults in fact displayed behaviors that reflected increases in curiosity. They were more willing to wait for information than younger adults and were equally able to remember the information they learned. The second study sought to replicate these results and to examine their neural substrates using fMRI. This study found that older and younger adults displayed equal levels of curiosity and memory. Results from fMRI also showed similar effects for both age groups: increased activation in brain regions associated with reward processing, as well as semantic memory, was related to curiosity and to memory. Chapter 2 explored the other end of development and examined changes in curiosity from late childhood into early adulthood. In this study, we focused on two different conceptualizations of curiosity -- willingness to wait (as in Chapter 1) and also a new measure of exploratory visual behavior. Results showed increases in both waiting and visual exploration between childhood and adulthood. These changes in curiosity were also accompanied by improvements in memory. These findings, like those in Chapter 1, provide evidence against the hypothesis that curiosity declines with age, and also expands our understanding of how different measures of curiosity-driven behavior may relate to one another. Chapter 3 addresses a fundamental question about how to evaluate curiosity and how different forms of curiosity cluster together. Using a large online sample, we obtained two separate groups of measures: measures of curiosity-driven behaviors (willingness to wait, ratings of interest about specific questions, curiosity-related memory), and measures of curiosity as a trait. Additionally, we obtained measures of traits and behaviors though to be related to curiosity, including impulsivity, need for cognition and willingness to wait for monetary rewards. Results revealed that different aspects of curiosity-related behavior cluster together, and that while there was a relationship between self-report and behavioral measures, there were also more nuanced differences in the relationships between different behaviors. Overall, the results from these three lines of research advance our understanding of curiosity by examining the extent to which curiosity is similar to reward processing, testing how it changes across the lifespan, and comparing different types of curiosity. The findings also open up new questions about the influence of other cognitive processes on curiosity and suggest ways in which we can better study how curiosity drives exploration and learning.

The idea of curiosity has evolved over time and is a major building-block in the foundation and expansion of museums and their precursors, cabinets of curiosity. These proto-museums began in Italy and spread throughout Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Cabinets of curiosity and museums transformed as visitors traveled to burgeoning collections across the Continent and England. Individuals visited curiosities for a variety of reasons. Some treated outings to collections as social events in which they could see others in their social circles and perhaps rise in social status if seen by the correct people. Others were merely curious and hoped to see rare, astonishing, monstrous, and beautiful objects. Scholars of the era often desired to discover new items and ideas, and discuss scientific and philosophical matters. The British Isles are removed from the main body of Europe, but still play a major role in the history of collecting. A number of private collectors and the eventual foundation of the British Museum contributed seminally to the ever-increasing realm of curiosities and historic, cultural, and scientific artifacts. The collectors and collections of Oxford and London and its surrounding areas, drew a diverse population of visitors to their doors. Individuals, both foreign and local, female and male, visitors and collectors in Early Modern England chose to actively participate in the formation of a collecting culture by gathering, visiting, discussing, writing about, and publishing on collections.

No description available.

Thesis (doctoral)--University of Tartu, 2006. / Thesis based on four papers.

The protection of assets is an important part of daily life. Currently this is done using a combination of passive security cameras and security officers actively patrolling the premises. However, security officers, being human, are subject to a number of limitations both physical and mental. A security robot would not suffer from these limitations, however currently there are a number of challenges to implementing such a robot. These challenges include navigation in a complex real-world environment, fast and accurate threat detection and threat tracking. Overcoming these challenges is the focus of my research. To that end a small security robot, the CuWITH or Curious WITH,has been developed and is presented in this thesis. The CuWITH utilises a programmable navigation system, curiosity-based threat detection and curiosity-driven threat tracking curiosity to protect a real office environment. In this thesis we will first discuss the CuWITH's system design in detail, with a particular focus on the components and the architectural strategies employed. We then move to a more detailed examination of the mathematical underpinnings of the CuWITHs curiosity based threat detection and curiosity driven threat tracking. The details of the CuWITH's navigation will also be explained. We will then present a number of experiments which demonstrate the effectiveness of the CuWITH. We show that the programmable navigation of the CuWITH, although simple, allows for easy modification of the patrol path without risk to the stability of the system. We will then present the results of both offline and online testing of the CuWITH's curiosity based threat detection. The reaction time and accuracy of the CuWITHs curiosity driven threat tracking will also be illustrated. As a final test the CuWITH is instructed to execute a patrol in a real office environment, with threatening and non-threatening persons present. The results of this test demonstrate all major systems of the CuWITH working together very well and successfully executing the patrol even when moved to a different environment.

The protection of assets is an important part of daily life. Currently this is done using a combination of passive security cameras and security officers actively patrolling the premises. However, security officers, being human, are subject to a number of limitations both physical and mental. A security robot would not suffer from these limitations, however currently there are a number of challenges to implementing such a robot. These challenges include navigation in a complex real-world environment, fast and accurate threat detection and threat tracking. Overcoming these challenges is the focus of my research. To that end a small security robot, the CuWITH or Curious WITH,has been developed and is presented in this thesis. The CuWITH utilises a programmable navigation system, curiosity-based threat detection and curiosity-driven threat tracking curiosity to protect a real office environment. In this thesis we will first discuss the CuWITH's system design in detail, with a particular focus on the components and the architectural strategies employed. We then move to a more detailed examination of the mathematical underpinnings of the CuWITHs curiosity based threat detection and curiosity driven threat tracking. The details of the CuWITH's navigation will also be explained. We will then present a number of experiments which demonstrate the effectiveness of the CuWITH. We show that the programmable navigation of the CuWITH, although simple, allows for easy modification of the patrol path without risk to the stability of the system. We will then present the results of both offline and online testing of the CuWITH's curiosity based threat detection. The reaction time and accuracy of the CuWITHs curiosity driven threat tracking will also be illustrated. As a final test the CuWITH is instructed to execute a patrol in a real office environment, with threatening and non-threatening persons present. The results of this test demonstrate all major systems of the CuWITH working together very well and successfully executing the patrol even when moved to a different environment.

Thesis (M. A.)--University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2006. / Title from PDF title page screen. Advisor: Paul J. Silvia ; submitted to the Dept. of Psychology. Includes bibliographical references (p. 30-33).

No description available.

No description available.

The  aim  of  the  current  study  was  to investigate  if  Openness  –  to  –  Experience  and  Neuroticism  personality  traits  are associated with curiosity. This will help us to estimate whether knowledge expansion is dependent on a person’s personality and which trait is more willing to invest time on learning.  The  experiment  consisted  of  two  different  sessions.  To estimate  curiosity, 40 subjects first performed a word-synonymy task, where Shannon’s (1948) entropy was estimated  and the result of which lead to the measurement  of uncertainty.  Then in a second session, participants had the option to request for feedback between a few alternative  options  at  a  cost  (time),  and  they  were  also  required  to  estimate  their satisfaction  about  the  answer  on  a  valence  rating  scale.  Finally, participants  were screened  for  personality  traits.  Neurotic  individuals  appeared  to  be  more  willing  in investing time on feedback request, in contrast to open individuals.